Psychiatrists and Cinnamon Twists
by Adriana Snow
Summary: River Song gets help from her "psychiatrist" after everything that happened in "The Impossible Astronaut" and "Day of the Moon." No plot. Just fluff.


"Doctor Song," one of the Stormcage guards addressed the form curled up on the standard issue prison bed. He might have worried that the lump was just a pile of pillows left by the cell's occupant when she escaped the prison, again, if it wasn't for the mass of blond hair poking up over the covers. Unless she had managed to smuggle a longhaired pet of some sort into her cell (though he wouldn't put it past her), River Song was currently where she was supposed to be.

River heard the guard address her, but didn't move except to squeeze her eyes closed even tighter in the hope that he would go away and not make her deal with people at the moment.

"Um," he said after a long stretch of silence. On most days, Prisoner Song would be on her feet at the slightest sound. "Doctor Song, I-it's time to wake up," he tried a little louder this time.

'It's time to wake up,' he says, River thought to herself. She'd never even been asleep since returning to the Stormcage Containment Facility the night before. Clenching her teeth, she attempted to image him away, but the instincts that were wonderful at alerting her to any lurking danger were detrimental to ignoring the presence of an armed person behind her back.

She was exhausted. In the months she'd been away, she had gotten very little sleep. Of course, the Stormcage guards didn't even know she'd been gone; she'd probably been out of her cell for five minutes. For her, it had been much longer and it felt even longer than it actually was. She'd spent weeks skirting around the edges of her own time stream, confronting forgotten memories from far in her past. Even now, many of those memoires were slipping through her fingers, years of trauma taunting her from the sidelines of her consciousness. Yet, at least, now she knew why she couldn't remember large chunks of her childhood and had found a way to know when something was missing. Her arms were still marked with the lines.

"It's 1:00," the relentless voice of the guard informed her, "it's time for your session with Doctor Bowman." He was getting nervous now, probably figuring this was a ploy to get him into the cell. River opened her eyes and sighed. The therapy sessions were part of her "rehabilitation process." If she even wanted to contemplate earning a pardon, she was required to attend all of them.

"I'm coming," she said, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. Perhaps it would be good for her, she thought, talking with Doctor Bowman. The psychiatrist was one of the few people involved with the prison she liked. He was surprisingly nice for a head doctor and they'd managed to have many interesting conversations in the last seven months he'd been working with her. Most of the time, the sessions felt like a nice break from her usual days in Stormcage. She'd flirt with him a bit, he'd reply with deadpan humor, and sometimes he'd sneak in chocolate biscuits for them to share. Today, she wasn't sure if she'd be that good of company.

The guard led her to a room a few hallways away from her cell and she obediently proceeded him through the door and took her usual seat at one side of the table. The guard removed the handcuffs, watching her intently, and secured her wrists to the table restraints as quick as he could. She inwardly rolled her eyes at his caution. She could get out of anything Stormcage had to offer before he could blink.

"I'll send in Doctor Bowman," the guard informed her before leaving the room. River took a deep breath, fiddling with her restraints out of habit and managed to free herself by accident. She sighed. Best prison in the universe. The cuffs clicked as she reengaged them just as the door creaked open.

"I think by now we have established that I will be fine," Doctor Bowman snapped at someone in the hall. "Yes, yes, whatever, now go away." He slipped in the door shutting it behind him with a decisive slam.

"Pudding brains," he mumbled under his breath and she smirked despite herself. He turned around with a flourish to grin conspiringly at her. "I managed to sneak in cinnamon twists. Freshly made. Well, at least they were before I had to go through half an hour of security screening. Half an hour and they couldn't even find cinnamon twists." He shook his head, disgusted, and reached into his jacket pocket flashing the ridiculous red inside lining. He dropped the bundle on the table in front of her.

She looked at the bundle and then at him and then at the bundle again. Now, River Song didn't cry often and despite how horrible the last few months had been, she hadn't cried once. She hadn't cried when witnessing the man she loved being "murdered" by a younger version of herself. She hadn't cried when a version who barely knew her showed up to whisk her and her parents off to 1969. She hadn't cried when confronting the monsters from her childhood. She hadn't even cried when she realized that she had just had her last kiss with the man who didn't know he was her husband. She had not shed one tear through the entire, hellish ordeal, but suddenly, when faced with a bundle of cinnamon twists and his kind eyes, she felt the tears building up.

"What are you doing?" Doctor Bowman asked sounding slightly horrified. "You're doing the eye thing. Why are you doing that?!" He made a helpless, jerking movement with his arms that made her want to laugh, but instead she started sobbing. "No. No no no no no no," he squawked coming around to her side of the table and patting the top of her head. "There is no need for that, come on now." She giggled at his antics, but it came out with a hysterical ring to it. "Look! Cinnamon twists!" he grabbed one from the package and waved it in front of her sending cinnamon grains everywhere. "Come on, they're your favorite. I got them special from your favorite teashop. They're still a bit warm see." He ripped of a piece of the treat and pushed it toward her mouth as though it were the antidote to whatever crying illness she had.

"I-" she started to speak, but as soon as her mouth opened, he shoved the piece of cinnamon twist into her mouth. She blinked up at him, startled out of her laments by the fact that he had actually just stuffed cinnamon covered bread into her mouth.

"There, there, see. That's better," he patted her head few more times as she chewed the mouthful of pastry. She glared up at him, but he didn't seem to notice.

"What was that?!" she asked when she finally managed to choke down the bread.

"I'm not completely sure. It seems you were having a mental breakdown, but I fixed it. Cinnamomum Zeylanicum. Works wonders on people under the influence of a wide variety of airborne hysteria pollen."

"That's not what I… It's not hysteria pollen?"

"It's not?"

"You are the worst psychiatrist ever," she informed him.

"What is it then?"

"I just," the tears started building up in her eyes again, but she shoved them back, "I've had a really bad couple of days."

"What type of bad days?" he asked casually.

Her hands clenched in the restraints. "Just some things from my past caught up with me just as a part of the future I've been dreading arrived."

"Hmm. Well that was bloody cryptic," he told her.

"You wouldn't understand."

He raised his eyebrows. "I think I might understand a lot more than you'd think."

She bit her bottom lip. She'd never contemplated opening up about her life to anyone other than her parents, The Doctor, and, when she was Mels, Brian, but she found that, for some reason, she trusted this man and she needed to speak to someone. Maybe she could tell him a few things. Not everything obviously, but if she told him what was wrong, he might be able to help her sort through the feeling rattling around inside her head. He was her psychiatrist after all; that was his job.

"I'll let you have the cinnamon twists if you tell me," he tempted.

"Who says I want another after you just assaulted me with one?"

"We both know you do." He winked at her.

She hesitated and he shoved the rest of the cinnamon twists toward her. "I escaped yesterday," she relented.

"What a surprise," he drawled when she paused for a bit too long.

"Shush," she said. "I was gone a few months and well it started with me being a witness to the murder I'm here for and I..." That made no sense, she thought. In fact, none of this story was going to make sense without any background information. She'd have to give him something without telling him everything. "Okay, wait, first off, have you ever heard of The Silence?" she asked. "Probably not. Okay. Well. The Silence is a religious order and they kidnapped me at birth because they thought they could use me to kill The Doctor."

Then, without her conscious permission, everything came pouring out of her. She told him far more than she should have: from the Silence to Mels to Berlin to studying the Doctor at University. There was no way to stop herself after starting. It was like draining a wound of its toxins. The only important thing she didn't tell him was what really happened at Lake Silencio leaving it at the fact that she'd shot The Doctor.

"And maybe I could have dealt with it being our last kiss. If it had been any other day maybe, I could have been okay. Well not okay, it would have still hurt, but I could have put on a brave face. It's not like I didn't know it was coming. But losing him, on top of everything I've been through in the last couple of months is just too much. When I was at University and the conditioning was still fresh, he was always there to bring me out of an episode. After I went to prison for his murder, a younger version of him was always there to scare away the nightmares when they got too hard to handle. I can feel them now, nightmares rattling around in my head waiting for me to close my eyes, to strangle me in the night, and I know that this time he's not going to be there to kiss them away." Her voice cracked a little at the end, but she'd long since used up all her tears.

Doctor Bowman didn't speak for a few moments. "How do you know it was your last kiss, River?" he asked.

"It was. That's how it works."

"But you don't know that," he stressed.

"Yes I do. He keeps getting younger and younger. I haven't seen one who really knows me in years. We are back to front and I'm getting closer to the back."

He thought for a few moments. "Your first kiss with him wasn't his last with you," he pointed out. She said nothing and he continued. "The first time you kissed him: when you killed him, but then saved him. You said that later you saw a version of him that had already been to Berlin. I assume you kissed that him even though he'd already experience your first kiss."

"Well, yes, but-"

"Then you're not actually back to front," he concluded.

"Then why haven't I seen him, an older him, in so long?" she challenged.

"Who knows," he brushed off her concerns, "weird cosmic thing that's happening at the moment. Times a strange thing. Maybe thinking you're not going to see an older version of him is keeping him away."

She shouldn't let herself hope, River thought to herself even as her mouth opened. "You really thing so?"

"With a woman like you for a wife, I don't think a man could stay away. To hell with time and space."

She smiled at him. "Thanks I-" And then her brain caught up with the conversation. Her spine straitened and her eyes narrowed on him. Before she even realized what she was doing, the wrist restraints were off and she'd launched herself over the table at him. She threw him off his chair and shoved him to the ground, pinning him with her knees on either side of his hips and her hands digging into his shoulders. She loomed over him peering into his eyes for any sign of scheming. None were immediately apparent.

"What did I do wrong?" he asked, eyes wide, but not as panicked as they probably should have been.

"I never said I married the Doctor," she stated calmly leaning over him to put her face right up to his.

"Ah, right," he tried to wiggle underneath her, but didn't get anywhere and stopped. "Listen, River I can explain..."

But she wasn't listening anymore because with her chest pressed up against his, she could suddenly feel an odd rhythm in his chest. Lifting herself up, she laid her hands over his chest to feel his heat or, more accurately hearts, beat.

"Doctor?" she asked.

"Uh, yeah."

"You regenerated."

"Yep." She just looked at him for a few moments, unsure of what she should do. How had she not seen it? Sure, his personality was different from her Doctor's, but some of his traits still shown through. With the inability to deal with humans crying to the fact that he snuck snacks into a high security prison. Not to mention the fact that he knew her favorite foods and where to buy them. For goodness sake, the favorite teashop he'd mentioned was in the 23rd century and she could tell the cinnamon twists had been from there. Who did she think he was? Although, she did acknowledge that believing they were back to front gave her no reason to think an older version of her husband would show up to pretend to be her psychiatrist, but that was no excuse.

"Why are you here?" she gritted out.

"What do you...?"

"Why are you here Doctor?" she asked again.

"I wanted to see you Riv-."

"Bullshit," she stated abruptly cutting him off and he gaped at her. "If you just wanted to see me, you would have told me who you were not pretended to be my psychiatrist for seven months."

"Well, I-I just," he stumbled over his words and she could feel anger and hurt bubbling up in her chest. She shook her head and he slammed his mouth shut.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked failing to keep her emotions out of her voice. There were a million reasons why he'd pretend to not be her husband and her mind instinctively jumped to the worst conclusions. He wouldn't look her in the eyes, peering at a spot beside her ear and that made her want to cry even more.

"I don't know," he said after a couple of long moments. "I just wasn't sure."

"Of what?" she asked. If he wasn't still pinned underneath her, she's sure he would be ringing his hands.

"I wasn't sure," he continued, eyes looking every except her face "if you'd like me."

"If I'd like….? Oh." All of her insecurities fled in an instant when she realized what he meant. The tension drained out of her.

She straitened, still sitting on his stomach, to let her eyes deliberately rove over the parts of him she could see. Humming thoughtfully, she placed her palms over his double heartbeat and then allowed them to wander across his chest. She reached up to trace the new lines on his face: the laugh lines around his mouth and the wrinkles on his forehead. Her hands ended their journey with her fingers in his already messy hair. He hadn't moved as she perused him; she wasn't even sure if he was breathing. A smirk crossed her face. "You, my silver haired fox are absolutely ridiculous."

"Am I?" he croaked.

"Mhmmm," she confirmed yanking on his hair a bit. He willingly tilted his head toward her so she could kiss him. It took a little getting used to with the slightly different shape of his lips and the new, somewhat awkward, position of his nose between them. Once she'd adjusted adequately, however, she noticed that many things about kissing him were the same. His mouth still moved over hers the same way and one of his hands slid into her hair the same way. He even tasted the same: like exploding galaxies and collapsing black holes and cinnamon. She tore her mouth from his. "Oi, you ate one!"

He blinked up at her for a few moments, his brain scrambling for what she was talking about. "I had to wait half an hour, River," he whined when he caught up to her line of thought. His whine sounded different in his rolling Scottish accent, but the five-year-old pout behind it was the same.

She pursed her lips together and glared at him.

"You were wailing over never getting to kiss me again five minutes ago and now you'd rather start a row about cinnamon twists?"

"Well I now have it on good authority that I will get to kiss you again," she pointed out.

"True," he acknowledged, "If I recall correctly, you and Bow-tie get up to all sorts of things in your near future."

"Sounds exciting," she said, her eyes sparkling. Then, she leaned down to whisper in his ear, "but what about in your near future?"

She was rewarded by getting to see a blush bloom on his new face, which, while not as tomato red as on his predecessor, was just as delicious. "Well, I-" he stammered.

She cut him off by pressing a kiss to his lips. "How far away is the TARDIS?" she asked.

"About half an hour away."

"She's a time machine," River pointed out.

"But that won't do any good for me," he pouted.

She rolled her eyes. "If you can make it to my cell in five minutes, I'll make it up to you," she promised huskily.

He swallowed hard. "Right, okay." She laughed at him and then hopped to her feet pulling him up with her. He leaned in and gave her a quick peck on the lips before shooing her back towards the table where she hooked herself back in the restraints.

"This therapy session is over," he called as he exited into the hallway, "you can take the prisoner back to her cell." He poked his head back in, "Five minutes," he promised and then left.

For once, he managed to be on time.

**Authors Note: Well it took a few drafts of this to get it anywhere near ready for the public eye and it probably still has some problems. Twelve's personality kinda slipped near the end and River had a few rough spots, but oh well...**


End file.
